Self Discovery Journalling
Discovering who we are is just as much about discovering who we are not. We are not our conditioning or programming, our character traits or our experiences, our roles in life, our appearance, our circumstances, our thoughts, feelings or our behaviour, our pasts, what other people think about us or even what we think about ourselves. We are spiritually whole, healthy, capable expressions of the energy of life with the ability to transform our ideas about and experience of who we are and let go of all that we are not.
This is a process, a journey, a continual coming back to ourselves. As we uncover more and more of our truth and release what has held us back from discovering it, we shift into new ways of being. This is an experience of change on every level as we transition into new mental, emotional and physical states, allowing past habits of thinking to be released, past habits of feeling to rise up and out of us and past behaviour to be stopped as soon as we notice we have engaged in it, without judgement, with patience and compassion for ourselves, with faith that we can discover and enjoy who we truly are and take healing, expansive and empowering action whether alone or with the support of others who are able to assist us in our transformation.
Journalling can be a helpful way of reflecting on and investigating what conscious and unconscious truths we hold about ourselves, life and the world. It can help us bring to light ideas, beliefs and opinions we had not realised we held or invested in as well as question and challenge those we are guided by that do not resonate with the knowledge of our truth and wholeness. Exploring our perspectives can enlighten us on how they shape and impact the way we think and feel and behave as well as guide us in identifying the conditioning and programming that directs us away from living as we can and truly want to.
Uncovering the patterning we operate from subconsciously so that we are aware of our filters, biases and triggers allows us to reprogramme our minds and bodies to a more healthy way of living so that the resolutions we make to live better from the conscious mind are supported and born out by our state of mind and being and our actions when our attention drifts.
Until we understand that we are more than our conditioning, more than our programming, more than the messaging that has formed the concepts and expressions of self that keep us identifying with them as well as with our triggers, our perceived limitations and misunderstandings about life we find ourselves feeling unable to make the changes we long to which leads us to doubt the resources that lie within us that are available to guide us to recognise that our identifiers do not represent an image of the true self which is beyond definition, fluid and eternal and lead us to realise the power and potential we hold to live well in every moment.
Learning to distinguish between our instincts, intuition and true values and the viewpoint of the limited mind allows us to discover that we have the ability to decide on which direction we look in, towards our inner wellness or away from it, so that we are able to know ourselves as more than the thinking we create, the feelings we energise and operate from, the behaviour we engage in, the roles we play, the patterns of being we default to when we aren’t paying attention.
Discovering who we are allows us to direct the power of consciousness so that we create, think, feel and live well.
As we begin to explore this further, we find that all that defines us are simply interpretations, ideas, constructs we have believed in, invested in and identified with and we discover that we can always change how we view and respond to them. We have the ability to learn more about who we really are and let go of what we are not. Reflecting on whether our approach to life is leading to contraction or expansion can guide us in changing how we live it. As we learn, we grow and as we grow, we experience new perspectives, shift our understanding and transcend our previous awareness, experiencing deeper insights and more choice in how we approach life.
We all have an inner wisdom driving us to release ourselves from concepts of self that feel limiting rather than empowering and it is in our discomfort that we realise that we are turned away from our inner resources of clarity, confidence, balance, strength, peace, harmony, grace, ease, joy. Realising that we have the ability to make positive and helpful changes and create an experience that feels healthy to us aligns us with and directs us from self trust, self worth, self respect and self love which feels like wholeness, wellness and inspires authentic action.
Alignment allows us to dissolve our resistance to life, to our instincts, to the intuitive drive to experience good feeling. Feeling good is our natural desire and birthright. Gently exploring what doubts this, allowing innate good feeling to be known to us, to direct us, to reset us means making things as easy and simple as we can for ourselves in every moment. This is not to say that we reject any suffering that comes up for us or refuse parts of ourselves that do not feel whole or disown what the limited mind labels as not love or goodness or health but that we turn to our inner wisdom and wellbeing for guidance in navigating our response to those experiences, reactions and expressions so that we no longer view them as evidence of or reason for our wrongness and are able to begin healing what created, motivates and judges them.
When facing the prospect of changing our relationship to our pasts, our suffering, our belief systems, connecting first with our hearts and the wisdom that resides within them and centring ourselves in the experience of love and its intelligence is a powerful and opening practice that guides us in truth and peace, resets our nervous systems and aligns us with our inner wellbeing. We are called to act from love when coming up against our conditioning. The desire for self discovery, for self realisation is the soul’s calling for us to reclaim our understanding of all that we truly are and bask in it. It is the call to come home to self love, wholeness and wellness. We are always being guided by our innate truth and wisdom. We may have spent a long time practising other ways of being but if we can remember to refer to love every time we catch ourselves repeating past expressions of being, we will remember the option we have to do better for ourselves.
We access heart based living by trusting in the wisdom of our hearts to guide us in becoming free from unhelpful patterns and beliefs. When we drop into our hearts and allow love and truth to move through us, clearing us, healing us, restoring us, we can reflect neutrally on how we are creating our experience of life and notice the options and choices we have for living peacefully, respectfully, reverently. When we refer to our hearts, we are led to experience unconditional self love, to give up battling ourselves in favour of following our inner wisdom.
In wisdom, we take responsibility for our actions. We empower ourselves to move beyond suffering into self trust and self truth whilst supporting ourselves in the ways we need to.
We are free to live well until we think we are not. We are free to embrace presence and grace and ease until we remember why we cannot or should not. We can feel our way through our thinking, recognising that we are able to identify what is unhelpful and remove our energy, attention and focus from it in order to experience new ideas and thinking that expand us into new and more aligned experiences. We all want freedom, health, happiness and they are available to us to return to as soon as we see through our fixed notions about who we are that limit us and allow the release of our experience of them.
Moving beyond the way we feel when we are not clear, coherent, present means taking charge of the way we think once we know this is an option for us and we are willing to experiment with it. We are able to allow our feelings without indulging those that do not feel like health, clarity, balance. We have the wisdom to navigate our feelings well so that we know when we need to explore them, when we don’t and when we do but aren’t in the right state of mind to in the moment. When we come to understand that we have a choice in how we respond to and, therefore, experience practised states of being that are not reflective of our truth and wholeness, we understand they do not need to be acted upon, identified with or lived in.
When we do this in love, we do more of what feels good to us as we investigate the limitless potential we hold within to make the choice to live better. This is a courageous choice and in love, we discover that we have the resources within to make it. Once we make the decision to explore who we might be outside of the roles and labels and beliefs and behaviour we have been assigned, taken on, practised and identified with, we are more invested in change than in reliving, rehearsing and continuing to invest in the experience of the limited self.
We can trust in our hearts to lead us in living healthy, happy lives because it is by following our hearts that we explore truth and experience distance from the unhelpful ideas that the limited self invests in. It is by engaging the coherence, intelligence, balance and wisdom of love that we begin to dissolve constructs of self and set ourselves free from the pattern of desiring freedom from the suffering caused by trust in and identification with who we are not whilst energising, investing in and defaulting to it.
We have access to the limitless knowledge of life that we tune in to when we remove our focus from who we think we are and open up to the information available to us from a greater awareness. This is the experience of being inspired, connected, in flow; it is a distance from the limited and connection with the limitless. As we develop our understanding of the true self, we find that transformation is a process of remembering who we truly are, of releasing who we not and being guided by a higher consciousness that is at one with and in love with life.
We all have moments of clarity, insight, understanding that amaze us, that shift us into a state of wonder, awe, gratitude and connection. Referencing these moments for support and encouragement when past beliefs and the physical experience of them come up allows us to remember our ability to feel whole and well and rather than paying attention to the claims of the limited mind that we have lost our connection with life, failed in some way, we know again that we have within us the wisdom we need to return to and recover it.
When we feel guided to be and share and do from the knowledge we uncover in our purest moments, we allow our attention to shift from investment in the limited self to awareness of all that we hold within us.
Becoming who we really are sees us releasing psychic blocks to the flow of wellbeing, beauty and wonder of life. The more conscious we become of how we live, the more able we are to operate from a lighter, healthier, happier state of mind and being and this impacts us in every area. We uncover a desire for honest reflection and expression, we hold safe space for ourselves as we consider how we view ourselves and the world and life, without fear of self judgement, self punishment or self harm.
In self love, from the awareness that we are innately whole, graceful, compassionate, we can question how we live and why. When we let go of the need to assign meaning according to a belief system that does not benefit us and do so with loving awareness, clarity and curiosity, we are able to explore and identify what resonates with our inner truth and enter a state of flow and freedom that engenders and encourages understanding, acceptance, flexibility, adaptability and transformation.
How are we assigning meaning? What value do we place and where? What motivates, dictates and inspires how we view and judge life? Are we consciously engaging our creative power? Are we witnessing with curiosity our creative processes? What are the beliefs that create meaning for us and what ideas are they rooted in? How do we feel when we pay attention to and invest in them?
Self discovery is a process of unravelling and unwinding what binds us, of allowing ourselves to challenge the concepts that are informing us that we know intuitively are not helping us. As we release layers of identity, we experience a distance from the beliefs, perspectives, experiences and behaviour we once felt inextricably linked with and in the space that this distance affords us we are free to consider how we live in every moment.
This is not about living perfectly but about living more in truth so that we react less unhelpfully to life and for shorter periods of time when we do and are able to live in a responsive way that feels aligned with our inner wisdom and core values. When we begin to consider the urge to default to limited and limiting expressions of self, we become open to the option of new thinking and feeling and action, interested in how we operate which leads us to insight into the conditioning, programming, socialisation that influence us so that we can step back from our beliefs and behaviour enough to realise we are not them and able to change them if we want to.
If the way we are viewing the world and ourselves is not enhancing our lives, leading us well in our growth and development, we can learn to operate from a more open and balanced mindset and healthy and empowered understanding. Becoming aware of our concepts of who we are, what we can do, what is on offer to us and how these inform how we take part in life allows us learn more about the choices we make in every moment. We deserve to live as the highest expressions of our truth, able to navigate life from an increasingly balanced perspective. The freedom this offers us is dizzying to the limited mind which fears change but it is ecstasy for the soul that guides us to it.
As soon as we are born, we are taught about who we are and we create a sense of self that is a reaction to and result of these teachings. Some of these teachings are faulty, flawed, confused and we come to believe that we have aspects of self that are this way.
However, these are not aspects of the true self but misunderstandings about who we are. The true self, the energy of consciousness, of love and health and joy, is always available to us, intact and ready to guide us in discovering all that we are and expanding beyond all that we are not.
In the process of self discovery, on the journey of self realisation, we uncover the ability to recognise the ideas, experiences and behaviour we have come to identify with and default to and change our habits of being when they are not enhancing our lives but limiting them. This is a liberating and also potentially confronting experience that leads us ultimately to empowerment.
As we uncover the beliefs that have led us to living as we do and delve deeper into the creation of those beliefs, centring ourselves in love and trust allows us to move through what is challenging for us in grace.
This is an act of liberation that allows us to express and operate from self love, compassion, forgiveness and patience and continue returning to the space of health, truth and clarity within.
Self investigation is the act of discovering all that we are and all that we are not, of tuning into our guiding light and following it. As we engage in self discovery, holding space for ourselves to allow all that we feel without judgement, with understanding and trust in our truth, leads us to aligned action and awareness of our capacity for transformation, connection and joy.
Transformation is not a process we have to undertake alone. If at any time we feel we need support, we can trust our inner guidance and seek it.
Who Am I Not?
Who Am I?
In what terms do I think of myself?
What language do I use to describe myself?
How do I assign self meaning?
What do I want to feel about myself?
What behaviour do I most want to stop engaging in?
How do I feel before I engage in it?
What am I thinking when I feel this way?
What beliefs have led me to think this way?
What might I believe instead?
What new thinking and feeling might I experience?
How might I respond to the urge to act this way?
Am I identified with this behaviour?
How does this make me feel?
Why do I think of myself this way?
How can I let go of this self image?
How do I feel when I imagine myself acting differently?
What are these feelings telling me?
Am I considering and reflecting on my answers from self love?
How will I continue to be self aware?
Acknowledging that we have the choice to change is the first step in taking responsibility for our actions, thinking and feeling state. This is an act of empowerment. This is not a denial of what we have been through or are dealing with. It is the recognition that the experience is not the event and that the experience can be changed.
We will all have our unique ways of discovering and connecting with the limitless, eternal and beautiful truth of who we are and allowing this truth to guide us. Choosing how we think and feel and act from the space of wellbeing means that we no longer need to struggle for inner health and happiness, we can allow them to be known to us by letting go of all that prevents us from connecting with and expressing our spiritual wholeness.
When we allow ourselves to operate from an increasingly healthier perspective and understanding, in the moments we revert to past ways of being, we simply notice and reset, choosing self love, humour and happiness to lead us.
Life is what we make it and learning that we have the option to make it wonderful is the beginning of creating an experience more in line with the truth of who we really are. We deserve to feel well, to love ourselves and to feel comfortable in the world around us. Discovering and living as the whole and healthy, capable and wise beings we are is the experience of releasing all that would question or prevent us from expanding into our wholeness. We have to make the choice between staying as we are or courageously embracing a new way of being. When we trust in our hearts to lead us, we are guided to choose transformation and it is a choice made in love, from love and supported by love.